James Mollison ジェームス・モリソン

The bedroom of James Mollison’s childhood memories is a small room in the attic of his family’s home in England which he decorated with things he liked as he was growing up–from Action Man figures, a Batman car, and Mumsie and Diddle-Dash, two mice for whom he built a multistorey play area from wooden fruit boxes. Then army posters, to pages from Smash Hits magazine featuring Duran Duran and Madonna, surfer posters, Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones, and finally, posters from the rave scene. His bedroom’s changing contents had reflected his identity and interests as they evolved through his childhood.
Years later, when asked to come up with an idea for engaging with children’s rights, Mollison found himself thinking about his bedroom: how significant it was during his childhood, and how it reflected what he had and who he was. That gave him the idea of looking at the bedrooms of children from all kinds of different circumstances as a way to investigate some of the complex situations and social issues affecting children today. He initially called the project ‘Bedrooms’, but soon realized that his own experience of having a ‘bedroom’ simply doesn’t apply to many children. Millions of families around the world sleep together in one room, and millions of children sleep in a space of convenience, rather than a place they can in any sense call their room. He came to appreciate just how privileged he was to have had a bedroom to sleep and grow up in. Mollison has now photographed children for Where Children Sleep in forty countries, across five continents. Presenting children who are born into very different situations but not responsible for them. The project is a vehicle for thinking about complex contemporary issues, such as poverty, wealth, climate change, gun violence, inequality, education, gender, and the refugee crisis.